The article by Mike Penland, a civilian employee at the Pentagon, illustrates the best and worst of the Defense Department in just a few paragraphs.

He cites some of the military’s core values and how most people work overtime to carry out the mission. Then he bemoans the discovery that those who work for the DOD are “nothing more than employees” because they face furloughs along with other federal workers.

In his mind, apparently, the people who collect the taxes to fund the military, the diplomats who save …

The article by Mike Penland, a civilian employee at the Pentagon, illustrates the best and worst of the Defense Department in just a few paragraphs.

He cites some of the military’s core values and how most people work overtime to carry out the mission. Then he bemoans the discovery that those who work for the DOD are “nothing more than employees” because they face furloughs along with other federal workers.

In his mind, apparently, the people who collect the taxes to fund the military, the diplomats who save the lives of service members, and the Veterans Affairs workers who care for them when they’re out are the ones who are really “just employees.”

Don’t other departments have mission statements? Don’t their members believe in the mission and work hard to carry it out? He thought DOD was better than everyone else, and now he knows that we’re all in this together.

The Associated Press is once again playing into the hands of political forces that would manipulate it. The sequester spending cuts are less than 3 percent. In the business world, a 3 percent midyear spending adjustment is not uncommon and not particularly difficult to accomplish by trimming nonessential items and/or deferring routine costs like furniture and equipment replacement.

The Pentagon makes headlines claiming it must furlough teachers and cut back commissary hours as the result of a minor spending reduction. Delaying the delivery of a few aircraft would …

]]>Re: “15,000 teachers at military schools will get furloughs” (TNT, 3-5).

The Associated Press is once again playing into the hands of political forces that would manipulate it. The sequester spending cuts are less than 3 percent. In the business world, a 3 percent midyear spending adjustment is not uncommon and not particularly difficult to accomplish by trimming nonessential items and/or deferring routine costs like furniture and equipment replacement.

The Pentagon makes headlines claiming it must furlough teachers and cut back commissary hours as the result of a minor spending reduction. Delaying the delivery of a few aircraft would probably accomplish the necessary spending reduction, but it would not get any headlines.

Back to the subject: If the media understood the scale of the minor spending adjustments required by the sequester they would not be so gullible as to publish these political scare tactics.

As they face challenges finding a job, many young veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan struggle with disabilities; nearly half have filed some kind of claim. Yet the budget cuts now being proposed in Congress could actually make it harder for veterans to get the care they need.

The federal government has threatened to triple veterans’ health care premiums to help pay down the deficit while discharging more than 100,000 troops, effectively sending them straight to the unemployment line.

Veterans understand just as well as anyone that the government needs to …

As they face challenges finding a job, many young veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan struggle with disabilities; nearly half have filed some kind of claim. Yet the budget cuts now being proposed in Congress could actually make it harder for veterans to get the care they need.

The federal government has threatened to triple veterans’ health care premiums to help pay down the deficit while discharging more than 100,000 troops, effectively sending them straight to the unemployment line.

Veterans understand just as well as anyone that the government needs to control federal spending. They don’t understand why veterans’ benefits must take the brunt of the cuts when the military is spending enormous sums on new fighter jets like the Joint Strike Fighter, a struggling defense program that will cost nearly twice as much as expected at $1.5 trillion.

By promising to sacrifice broken defense programs in order to save veterans programs, leaders in Washington can show a serious commitment to the men and women who’ve served.

(Hawkins is the national coordinator of the Congressional Black Caucus Veterans Braintrust in Washington, D.C.)

]]>http://blog.thenewstribune.com/letters/2013/02/28/put-veterans-first/feed/0MILITARY: Selective Service discrimination should end, toohttp://blog.thenewstribune.com/letters/2013/01/25/end-the-registration-of-18-year-old-males/
http://blog.thenewstribune.com/letters/2013/01/25/end-the-registration-of-18-year-old-males/#commentsFri, 25 Jan 2013 19:26:03 +0000http://blog.thenewstribune.com/letters/?p=61695Now that the Department of Defense has ended the discrimination against women in combat, it is time to end the discriminatory practice of requiring only 18-year-old males to register for Selective Service.

The United States must either have universal registration for all 18-year-olds or eliminate the requirement altogether. Currently a male’s failure to register is penalized by loss of participation in federal financial aid programs for higher education. Equal opportunity for all.

]]>Now that the Department of Defense has ended the discrimination against women in combat, it is time to end the discriminatory practice of requiring only 18-year-old males to register for Selective Service.

The United States must either have universal registration for all 18-year-olds or eliminate the requirement altogether. Currently a male’s failure to register is penalized by loss of participation in federal financial aid programs for higher education. Equal opportunity for all.

Digesting Samuelson’s weekly morsels requires much attrition; they constitute a biopsy of the neo-con soul for us to inspect.

His backdrop is sound; $2.1 trillion in budgetary reductions for 2012-2021 were passed in debt-ceiling negotiations. Of those reductions, $1.2 trillion were considered “painful” and renegotiable by congressional “super-committee” until a 2013 “sequestration mechanism.”

But Samuelson cannot resist the tried-and-true propaganda of fear-mongering, blaming our president for “devastating cuts” which “dangle over the throat of defense.”

Digesting Samuelson’s weekly morsels requires much attrition; they constitute a biopsy of the neo-con soul for us to inspect.

His backdrop is sound; $2.1 trillion in budgetary reductions for 2012-2021 were passed in debt-ceiling negotiations. Of those reductions, $1.2 trillion were considered “painful” and renegotiable by congressional “super-committee” until a 2013 “sequestration mechanism.”

But Samuelson cannot resist the tried-and-true propaganda of fear-mongering, blaming our president for “devastating cuts” which “dangle over the throat of defense.”

“As we look beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan … we’ll be able to ensure our security with smaller conventional ground forces,” President Obama said.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta concurred: “The U.S. joint force will be smaller and leaner, but its great strength will be that it is more agile, flexible, ready to deploy, innovative and technologically advanced,” adding that “The plan is aligned to strategic priorities we have identified to keep America safe and maintain the strongest military in the world.”

These statements are corroborated by foreign policy successes in Pakistan against Osama bin Laden; in Libya against Moammar Gadhafi; and by exercising discretion in Egypt.

While Obama achieves historic nuclear treaties with both Russia and North Korea, Samuelson cries foul that the budget unfairly hurts Republicans. He warns of “dreadful consequences” of “chaos” and “confusion.”

Federal Transfer Funds (FTF) – monies entering the state to pay for federal commitments – represent a good portion of the economy of Washington state due to its several military installations and large military retiree population.

In the 2010 fiscal year, $3.737 billion was paid to fulfill commitments to 70,983 military retirees, their dependents and 8,373 retiree widows in this state. More than $1 billion of this is retiree retention pay. With most of this spent in the state boosting businesses, creating new jobs and reducing unemployment, it …

Federal Transfer Funds (FTF) – monies entering the state to pay for federal commitments – represent a good portion of the economy of Washington state due to its several military installations and large military retiree population.

In the 2010 fiscal year, $3.737 billion was paid to fulfill commitments to 70,983 military retirees, their dependents and 8,373 retiree widows in this state. More than $1 billion of this is retiree retention pay. With most of this spent in the state boosting businesses, creating new jobs and reducing unemployment, it has a major impact on the state’s economic well-being.

The state will suffer a huge decrease in FTF with the proposed cutbacks in the defense budget. The proposed revamping of the military retirement system to an IRA-type retirement over time would negatively affect the state’s economy by billions of dollars plus military retiree retention pay now entering the state each year. Every facet of the state’s economy will be negatively affected.

This “penny wise, pound foolish” proposal will cost the Defense Department more in recruiting/training costs as it must continually recruit and train new troops to replace the trained career troops who will leave the service in droves as they refuse to put their lives on the line without the added incentives of the present retirement system.

The politicians are forgetting that the preamble to the Constitution requires the government to provide for the common defense of the United States. It can’t be done by shorting our career military.